South Africa tear up Vaughan's chosen men

Wednesday 30 July 2008 19.01 EDT
First published on Wednesday 30 July 2008 19.01 EDT

A traumatic fortnight for English cricket showed no signs of abating yesterday as South Africa, already 1-0 up in the four-match series, took control of the third Test to conjure dreams of a first series victory in this country since 1965. At stumps on the first day of a game England must not lose if they are to take the series to The Oval, the tourists trailed by 193 with nine wickets in hand and even Peter Moores, that most relentless of optimists, had to concede England's dismal first-innings total of 231 on a flat Edgbaston surface was "disappointing".

"It looks a good pitch," said England's coach. "There's nothing wrong with it at all, which is why we're disappointed we didn't bat better and build a big score, especially after a decent start. But that's the total we've got to work with. We've got to pull ourselves tight, scrap hard to fight our way back in the game, knowing that, if we do, we'll have a chance with South Africa batting last on that wicket."

Moores might have been rendered speechless by an inept England collapse in which all 10 wickets fell for 163 in 54.2 overs after Andrew Strauss and Alastair Cook had added a careful 68 for the first wicket. Instead he took refuge in the safe haven of management-speak. Faced with the prospect of a second home Test-series defeat out of four - his predecessor Duncan Fletcher lost only one out of 14 in England - he would offer only guarded criticism of his team's performance.

Moores claimed his players had got over the 10-wicket hammering they received in the second Test at Headingley, where Michael Vaughan - out first ball yesterday to Andre Nel - questioned the team's unity. "We've been in good spirits," he said. "We wanted to get more runs but now we've got to come back with something and fight our way back in the game. We had a couple of tough decisions and suddenly we were behind the eight-ball."

Moores described the run-outs in successive balls of Jimmy Anderson and Monty Panesar as "disappointing", which may have been a generous assessment, and added: "It was a shame because Andrew Flintoff was starting to look dangerous but he ran out of partners. You can see why Monty wanted to get a second run because he was trying to get Fred back on strike. But it was a mistake."

He also defended the re-selection of Paul Collingwood, who scratched around for four runs in 45 minutes before edging Jacques Kallis to slip, on the grounds that the Durham batsman has been "playing pretty well in practice. He's a tough bloke who's had a bad run of scores but we think this is the best side for England."